


A Deal with God

by thecarlysutra



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bargaining, Best Friends, Friendship, Gen, Hospitals, Injury, Injury Recovery, Permanent Injury, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Serious Injuries, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 13:55:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17468858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecarlysutra/pseuds/thecarlysutra
Summary: And if I only couldMake a deal with GodAnd get him to swap our places- Kate Bush, "Running Up That Hill"For a challenge at Superhero Land.





	A Deal with God

  
Tony wakes the day after Siberia in a chair next to Rhodey's hospital bed. He dreamed of being chased, and something in his dream startled him awake. He takes in a sharp breath, and he can feel a deep, deep bruise in the shape of the arc reactor of his ruined suit. He hasn't hurt like this since they took the real one out of his chest. He can still remember what it felt like to breathe around it, like he could never catch his breath. 

“You look worse than I feel,” Rhodey says. Tony squints through the dim light at the shape of Rhodey's face outlined in the weird blue-green of the heart monitor, and thinks of every other time he's seen that face, from the first time in a dorm room at MIT to a desert he'd been walking for days (“How was the Fun-vee?”), to when the mask came up in that field where he'd fallen. Tony had watched him fall, and he had wished, more than anything in that moment, to change places with him. Maybe it would have been pragmatic to wish for speed or God's hand to emerge from the heavens and catch Rhodey before he hit the ground, but he remembers the thought clear as day: Take me instead. Give it to me. 

“Har har,” Tony says. “You can't even see how wretched I look in this light.”

Rhodey laughs, and it's the best thing Tony's heard in a long time.  



End file.
